Am I paying too much for my cell phone bill?
If you spend more than $100 on your cell phone bill, it is a sign that you are paying too much. Most busy persons spend around $100+ per month on their phone bills, so it can actually reach up to 300 to 400 dollars after including family. People with no specific interest in calculating their bills around pay higher bills than usual (without knowing).
Many people might have seen that their phone bills are high and they are paying too much, which is not a good option, and they have thought of a change but are afraid to switch the plans. But, of course, reasons can be different, like people might be afraid of losing their contact number or afraid of new cellphone plans.
Now is the time to change, or think until you have planned to afford to pay such high amounts on just your phone bills.
How Much do You Pay for a Phone Bill?
The US’s average person pays a phone bill as a single user for around $75. The average phone bill per year in the United States is around $900. However, phone bills can be reduced significantly if we act responsibly and disciplined.
In the first step, you need to Understand Your Cell Phone Bill:
Now think for a moment do you need the expensive plan phone.
How to save money on my cell phone bill?
To save money on the cell phone, you need to:
- Use Wi-Fi when you can
- Cut insurance
- Use automated payments
- Use employee discount
- Try to buy no-contract phones.
- Choose a cheap postpaid contract and limit your spending.
Today I will discuss the most affordable ways to save quite a lot of money on the phone bills you have been paying for so long.
In following some ways, you may be able to keep your contact number, but there are more chances to lose the contact number in the rest of cases, but that would not burden you on losing when on the other hand you will be saving hundred dollars. So, some of the ways will help you save some of the money on phone bills.
Cut your cell phone completely.
I guess cutting off your cellphone would be an extreme step for many people to take. Whereas when you cannot pay your phone bills, keeping the phone would be just a waste.
Actually, I was surprised when I read the report, where it was mentioned that 20% of people do not use cellphones and go fine without them. Before we travel into this era of technology, no one has ever thought of having personal cellphones.
Since it is our need and the obligation from the society that we have to fulfill to meet the status, we call it our comfort zone but think that if we allow ourselves to live without it, I guess we can make it. 🙂
If you cannot get through your bills, cutting the bills’ source is your ultimate option.
Go for the new plan you can afford.
Many plans vary in charges that you need to pay to them. But it is always better to go through detailed research about the plans and then decide which one is best for you. all plans vary from basic to premium or professional (standard).
Now the question is what factors are there which you need to think about before selecting a plan. The following are the factors that you need to see.
How much data do you use each month?
Many people are working from home now because of a pandemic or maybe because they are freelancers, so they need some extra GBs of data, and some need more or less 1Gb, so that totally depends upon what you like you need to have. There are huge price differences to compare the prices with different companies to find an affordable package for you.
If we talk about 2020, many companies only charge for international calls (minutes) for national calls. They usually offer different packages regardless of charging minutes to minutes.
Some other factors are that not all companies have their best ground in your city, or another city may be one company with the best offers and affordable prices in your city but not in the other city. Hence, it would help if you researched all companies to draw a line between them.
Do you really need that expensive cell phone?
If you are status and upgrades your phones as the new and latest models come out, you cannot save a single penny. So we call “show off to impress others” should be deleted from your life if you really want to save some money because it is always unnecessary to spend your whole saving or earnings to upgrade your phone. After all, your colleagues have upgraded theirs.
For example, Apple iPhone, as iPhone launches its latest models every year and the prices are according to their innovations, and people line up in front of their outlet to buy them, where they can save some money if they buy the slightly older version of that latest model of iPhone.
Divide your billings into more than 2 lines
You can call it a free trick since many people are doing this or try to do this one way or another. If you are paying for just a single line, then you will have to pay a complete bill throw on your budget, which means one for one, and if you add up one more line in your connection, then you will have the chance to split up your bill, and that will become one-two for one.
In this way, you can save some money; I know some people say saving a little amount on their bills are not worth saving it is just a waste of time and effort. But if you start saving a little amount today, that will add up, and at the end of the year, you will save more than 3 to 4 hundred dollars.
Switch to paperless billing.
Many companies do have their offers upon paperless billing plans; well, paperless billing plans are those in which you will get the bills and the receipts of the payments all online on your cellphone, where most people like to have paper bills can keep the records.
Well, this is not going to work; keeping the paper bills for your record is an old way, and letting the computer system keeps your bill’s record is the new and efficient way.
Go for an autopay plan and save up to $10
Many wireless carriers offer up to %10 off on your monthly phone bill; you have to sign up for any automatic payment plans for this. When you sign up as a single person, you may get $5 off, and if you have 5 to 6 family members, you can save up to $30 a month.
That is quite an easy task you can apply to your budget. In some way, it is quite a useful factor that bills go paid with autopay features.
Try to switch to a prepaid cell phone package.
Switching to the prepaid carrier is the ultimate option; you can always change your cellphone’s prepaid plans. For example, some of the plans from two different companies might interest you in switching to prepaid.
Prepaid plans are still much affordable and still helps you to save some extra money. HOW? It is quite simple if you keep the recharge just for the urgent and important calls and usage, you act as limited and try not to waste the recharge you already have. On the other hand, if you are on postpaid plans, you have no idea how much data you are using, and at the end of the month, you have to pay for all the data you have used unnecessarily.
Try to Change or try to remove your cell phone insurance.
Most cell phone carriers offer a bundle of plans covering up warranties, insurances, and other damages to be fulfilled. Thus, there is a need to think about whether your cellphone needs protection insurance?
If so! Then think about the charges you are actually paying for the insurance. Here are some of the reasons you really need to look at before you pay for the insurance. You are paying few dollars for insurance in your premium plan selection, where you are getting some damage protection like a warranty or getting Bluetooth handling, etc.
Where you are spending these dollars like 5 to 10 on insurance, you can easily save and let the premium plan shifted to the basic plan. You will get the basic cell phone damage or loss protection or repair facility in insurance; you will be saving $80 to $100 per year on just insurance.
Change your billing (home) address.
Half of the fees added to your bills are based totally upon the area where you are living. If you have moved somewhere where charges are low, or someone from your family has moved, you can change your address.
Updating of address is quite easy, there are two ways for doing this, most likely you can log in to your account or profile and simple make changes over there, and another way is to call customer service officer and ask them to change your address that will be no issue as well.
After leaving Wells Fargo Bank in 2014, Daniel began a career as a finance consultant, advising companies and individuals on economic policy, labor relations, and financial management.
At Promtfinance.com, Daniel writes about personal finance topics, value estimation, budgeting strategies, retirement planning, and portfolio diversification.
Read more on Daniel Smith's biography page.
Contact Daniel: daniel@promtfinance.com